Ford

After spending less than a year living in Southern California, quarterback Ford Green of Westlake High retains his distinct South Carolina accent, still answers questions with “yes sir” and “no sir,” and greets adults with a handshake that can be described as nothing less than crushing.

The first impression he makes is off the charts, which piques the curiosity of strangers wanting to learn more. It only gets better., with As on his report card, an arm that throws frozen ropes and a sports history that includes baseball and boxing, which means defensive linemen better think long and hard if they want to do something stupid.

As a freshman last season, Green guided Westlake to an 11-1 record with 2,195 yards passing and 31 touchdowns. It was his first time playing quarterback with the idea of “going all in.” During the spring, Ohio State was among the schools offering a scholarship despite his lack of football experience. The Buckeyes might be on to something.

The 2026 season could be the year the 6-foot-2 Green rises to a whole different level because of his expected improvement from workouts, practices and devoting total attention to where he wants to go.

Before last season, he said he played football for fun in South Carolina. He was a baseball player, with his focus on pitching. Then, in 2025, everything changed. He said he went “all in” on playing quarterback.

“I fell in love,” he said. “When I wake up, I think about football. When I’m eating, I think about football. When I’m at school, I think about football. I’m infatuated by the game. Not a second goes by where I don’t think something about football. It’s my life.”

Green is someone to pay close attention to this summer during passing tournaments and showcases. Call it the bandwagon effect that happens when one person after another comes to the same conclusion and recognition that someone is going to be very successful.

Twice a week, he goes on Zoom to receive training from a Canadian Football League quarterback. Other times, he works with a private quarterback coach. He already understands the intricacies of the position.

“There’s so many more factors in playing quarterback than just arm,” he said. “It all starts between the ears.”

As scrutiny heightens, attention grows and expectations increase, Green said he’ll follow a big lesson already learned.

“Take it day by day,” he said. “It’s never as good as it seems, it’s never as bad as it seems. Stay neutral and get better every day. I feel if I get better every day, I’ll be able to reach my goals and dreams.”

He said he was too busy with football this year to go out for Westlake’s baseball team, but in the spring of 2027, prepare for his high school pitching debut.

Green was part of an outstanding group of class of 2029 quarterbacks last fall, all of whom should be continuing their rise to prominence.

Seven-on-seven tournaments will be happening almost every weekend in June. Then, next month, prepare for one of the best on July 11 at Huntington Beach Edison, which brings out St. John Bosco, Santa Margarita and Mission Viejo, among others. The “offseason” has been shortened, with zero week scheduled for the weekend of Aug. 21-22. Programs are required to take a mandatory two-week summer break. Some take it in June, others in July. And then there’s the inevitable movement of players through transfers to change teams.

For Green, the 2026-27 school year is shaping up as his most pivotal season to show where he’s headed and what kind of talents he has in the classroom, on the football field and on the pitching mound.

Monitor the journey closely. Something tells me he won’t disappoint.

This summer, the U.S. Navy will demonstrate the ability of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, with its two A1B nuclear reactors, to power a base on land. The test at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia is part of a larger effort to ensure facilities can remain up and running even if existing power sources are lost due to attacks and other contingencies. Using ships to provide electricity ashore is not new, but being able to use a Ford class aircraft carrier in this way might open up additional operational possibilities, as well as help in future disaster relief scenarios.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao briefly mentioned the planned test at a hearing before members of the House Armed Services Committee on May 14.

“This summer, Norfolk Naval Base [sic] is going to be powered from an aircraft carrier,” Cao said on May 14. “We’re going to export the energy from the aircraft carrier to the base.”

“The Department of the Navy is executing a multi-pronged strategy to ensure the delivery of firm, baseload power to our installations for energy resilience and mission assurance,” a Navy spokesperson subsequently told TWZ directly when we reached out for more information. “One line of effort in the strategy is to deliver power from a Ford class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to a compatible shore installation, to demonstrate the capability to meet emergent, mission critical needs. An initial test of this capability is being planned for later this year at Naval Station Norfolk.”

This statement refers to the Ford class generically, but the USS Gerald R. Ford is currently the only ship of its kind to have been commissioned into service. It is also homeported in Norfolk and just recently returned from a marathon 326-day deployment. That is the longest an American carrier has been at sea since the Vietnam War, and included supporting the mission to capture Venezuela’s dictatorial former President Nicolas Maduro and combat operations against Iran.

USS Ford returns home after 11-month deployment for Iran war and Maduro’s capture

Supercarriers like Ford are already very much floating cities, with typical crew complements ranging from roughly 4,000 to 5,000 individuals, including members of the embarked air wing. They have immense power-generation requirements.

As noted, each Ford class carrier has two A1B nuclear reactors, the exact power output of which is classified. However, they are said to offer a 25 percent increase in “reactor energy” compared to the A4Ws used on Nimitz class aircraft carriers, as well as be simpler to operate. Based on that, the A1B is generally assessed to be rated at some 700 MWt. Two of them would then have a combined rating of 1,400 MWt. This is a fraction of what is offered by typical commercial power-generating reactors in the United States today. At the same time, those reactors are also designed to provide electricity across entire regions rather than just to a single military base.

Being able to use the Ford and other future carriers as floating power plants for major bases like Norfolk could offer a useful backup option for providing electricity if established power sources suddenly become unavailable for any reason. American officials have been increasingly sounding the alarm that many areas previously considered inaccessible sanctuaries, including in the U.S. homeland, could now be at risk during future conflicts. The scale and scope of long-range threats, as well as options for carrying out near-field attacks, only continue to grow. The proliferation of longer-range one-way attack drones, something where the barrier to entry is also low, has had a particularly pronounced impact on this threat ecosystem.

Demonstrating the ability of a Ford class aircraft carrier to provide power ashore might open up other operational possibilities. The U.S. military, as a whole, is increasingly focused on new distributed concepts of operations involving widely dispersed forces, many of which could be forward-deployed at operating locations with limited established infrastructure.

Turning an aircraft carrier into a floating powerplant could be valuable in a wide array of non-combat scenarios abroad and at home, including during disaster relief missions. Getting the power back on is often a critical component of those operations, which in turn can help restore access to medical care and other essential services.

Many critical U.S. military facilities are themselves in areas prone to natural disasters, the impacts of which can be severe and have significant second-order ramifications. Bases provide epicenters for recovery, too, routinely providing essential services after disasters. They could do so after attacks or in other contingencies. Making sure they have uninterrupted power in any of those scenarios would be critical. There are also long-standing concerns about the resiliency of America’s aging power grids, which could also be an indirect threat vector, including from cyberattacks.

During his testimony, Acting Secretary Cao highlighted how a carrier serving as a powerplant could also provide other support in a non-combat scenario.

“The energy that’s produced from these, we can … use it for a four-stage distiller making water, fresh potable water,” he said. “On a carrier, we’re pumping millions of gallons over the side every day of fresh potable water that tests at pH 7 [neutral pH], right, that we can now export in places like California, where you have a drought.”

As noted, none of this is entirely new. The U.S. military has a long history of using ships, including conventionally-powered aircraft carriers, to provide power ashore. One of America’s very first carriers, the USS Lexington (CV-2), helped provide electricity to Tacoma, Washington, between December 1929 and January 1930. At the time, the city’s grid relied on hydroelectric power sources, the output from which had dropped severely due to a mix of environmental factors. In 1931, Lexington also brought medical personnel and humanitarian aid to Nicaragua following an earthquake, an early example of the general value of carriers in the disaster relief role.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom collectively utilized at least seven Buckley class destroyer escorts as floating power plants. The Buckley class was well suited for this use given its propulsion system, which consisted of steam turbines powering electric motors. At least one of these ships, the USS Donnell, was converted to this role after suffering severe damage during combat operations in the North Atlantic. It was deemed to be too expensive to repair the ship to return to service in its original role.

An especially relevant past example is that of the MH-1A. This was a floating nuclear power plant converted from a World War II Liberty ship, originally named the SS Charles H. Cugle and later renamed Sturgis. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) operated MH-1A, which had a power rating of 10 MW, and used it to provide electricity in the Panama Canal Zone between 1968 and 1975. The ship and its reactor were subsequently returned to the contiguous United States. MH-1A was defueled in 1977. It remained in storage for decades before the decision was finally made to decommission it, a lengthy process that was only completed in 2018. Sturgis was subsequently scrapped.

At the time of writing, it is unclear if the Navy has any ships or barges in inventory that are explicitly capable of providing power ashore. Electricity is routinely provided to naval vessels in port from grids ashore, and the ability to send power the other way, at least in an ad hoc manner, has come up in the past. For instance, in 1982, the Navy considered sending the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Indianapolis to Hawaii to serve as a floating nuclear power station in the wake of Hurricane Iwa. Indianapolis was not ultimately deployed for this purpose in that case.

As an aside, the Navy has also long used decommissioned nuclear-powered submarines as floating schoolhouses for sailors learning how to operate and maintain nuclear reactors.

There are examples of ship-to-shore power generation elsewhere globally. Currently, Russia’s Akademik Lomonosov is the only purpose-built floating nuclear power plant in operation today, and you can read more about it here. However, South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries is actively working on a new floating nuclear power station design, and similar developments could be on the horizon elsewhere. There are also non-nuclear floating power plant designs in service, notably with commercial firm Karpowership in Turkey, and in development today.

Floating Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) “Akademik Lomonosov”

Powership Video

There are still questions about the viability of employing Navy carriers like Ford in this way today. For one, ships sitting in port are inherently more vulnerable than ones at sea. Carriers are high-value assets that would be top targets in any major conflict, to begin with. Using a carrier as a replacement for traditional power sources, especially for a base that may have already have been or still be under attack, could come along with substantial additional force protection requirements. At the same time, carriers are inherently well-protected and relatively hardened platforms, especially against lower-end, smaller-scale threats.

There is also an operational capacity question. The Navy is currently struggling to meet operational demands with the 11 carriers it has available now. Between continued delays in the construction of new Ford class carriers and the schedule for retiring aging Nimitz class ships, there is a possibility that the force could shrink further in the near term. The Navy just extended the service life of the USS Nimitz to bring its impending inactivation in line with the expected delivery date of the second member of the Ford class, the future USS John F. Kennedy.

Around the Yard at NNS: John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) Builder’s Sea Trials

Pulling any of the Navy’s heavily in-demand aircraft carriers, which provide unique power projection capabilities, out of rotation to sit in port generating power could be a tough sell. That being said, carriers that are in between deployments could be used in this way, in some cases with relatively minimal disruption to other aspects of the force generation cycle. The seriousness of the contingency in question would also factor into the Navy’s assessment of its general force requirements and priorities.

It is worth noting here that the U.S. military has already been making investments in other forms of energy resiliency at established bases, as well as the ability to provide significant amounts of power at forward locations, in recent years. Acting Secretary Cao’s comments last week about the upcoming test at Naval Station Norfolk were prompted by a question about ongoing work on new small modular nuclear reactors, or SMRs, to help power U.S. military bases. The U.S. Army is currently the lead service for those efforts, as you can read more about here. The U.S. Air Force has also been heavily involved.

“We’ve got to have an overall programmatic champion for the SMR program,” Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Caudle, the service’s top officer, who also testified at the hearing alongside Cao, said. “So I think we’re dithering a bit there, and not really landing on the pilot, and laying out the program of record.”

“While the Army may be tapped to be the overall lead for it [SMR], I see no world in which the Navy is not going to be part of that discussion and bring our expertise through our long-established Naval Reactors [office], deep understanding of reactor physics, and understanding [of] safe operation.”

As an aside, the Navy just recently announced its intention to expand its nuclear-powered fleets by using this method of propulsion on the future Trump class battleships. This, in turn, has raised new questions about the outlook for those ships, which you can read more about here.

When it comes to using Ford class aircraft carriers as floating nuclear power plants, the test this summer will help in determining whether this could be another mission to add to the repertoire of these ships.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including deployed Carrier Strike Groups (CSG) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG), using publicly available open-source information. Check out last week’s map here.

The Ford is finally home. The supercarrier, with nearly 4,500 Sailors aboard, pulled into Naval Station Norfolk on Saturday, greeted by hundreds of families and friends after completing a grueling 326-day combat deployment. The well-deserved homecoming capped the longest deployment in more than five decades, which was extended multiple times to support operations across two continents and combatant commands.

Here’s TWZ’s weekly carrier tracker monitoring America’s flattop fleet, including deployed Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) and Amphibious Ready Groups (ARGs), using publicly available open-source information. Check out last week’s map here.

The historic deployment of the Gerald R. Ford CSG appears to be winding down, finally. The strike group – now deployed for a record-setting 314 days – transited the Suez Canal northbound on May 1 and has reportedly begun the journey back home to Norfolk, according to the Washington Post. However, CENTCOM still has two CSGs under its command, led by USS Abraham Lincoln and USS George H.W. Bush, positioned in the Arabian Sea together for the first time since the conflict kicked off. The second carrier provides additional flexibility to enforce the blockade, support the just-announced ‘Project Freedom’ mission to get commercial vessels out of the Persian Gulf, and, should combat operations resume, strike Iran with double the firepower.

“U.S. military support to Project Freedom will include guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members,” CENTCOM stated in a release on Sunday. But reporting from the Wall Street Journal claims the plan “doesn’t currently involve U.S. Navy warships escorting vessels through the strait,” and the mechanics of the mission remain unclear. Also of note, Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM’s Commander based in Florida, visited troops over the weekend.

Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, visited USS Milius (DDG 69), May 2, as the guided-missile destroyer patrolled regional waters in support of the U.S. blockade operations against Iran. While on board, he interacted with Sailors and addressed them on the 1MC while highlighting… pic.twitter.com/2qTmMmfY05

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) May 3, 2026

The Boxer ARG steamed northbound through the Malacca Strait on April 30, TWZ was among the first to report, and entered the Indian Ocean the following day. Boxer went dark on AIS shortly after completing the transit but, assuming a direct route to reinforce the Tripoli ARG in the Middle East, could arrive in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility sometime next week. As of publication, the ARG was still operating under U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Continuing her scenic tour circumnavigating South America, USS Nimitz moved through the Strait of Magellan and into the Atlantic Ocean on April 26. While Nimitz’s exact position is currently unknown, pictures on DVIDS show her most recently participating in a PHOTOEX off the southeast coast of Argentina.

Note: Positions are general approximations. Non-deployed LHA/LHD amphibious warships are not shown.

Contact the author: ian.ellis-jones@teamrecurrent.io

Secretary of the Navy John Phelan says his service is looking to wrap up a review of its aircraft carrier plans within the next month or so. The Navy has been taking a deep look at the design and capabilities, and associated costs, of the Ford class as compared to the older Nimitz class. The question has been raised about whether this might point to a major shift in the service’s carrier acquisition strategy on the horizon, including the potential cancellation of planned orders for more Ford class ships and even a transition to a new design.

Phelan talked about the carrier review yesterday at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2026 exposition. When asked, Phelan said that there was nothing in particular about the Ford class that prompted the Navy to take a new comprehensive look at the program and that the service is looking for ways to cut costs and be more efficient across the board.

A key question the review has been focused on is “are we getting the appropriate bang for our buck, i.e., how superior is the Ford [class] to the older Nimitz class, etc,” the Navy’s top civilian leader said. “To be honest, we’re reviewing every program, so it’s – carriers [are] just one of them.”

That being said, President Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of the Ford class, and its electromagnetic catapults (also known as the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS) and weapons elevators in particular, which have faced serious reliability and maintenance issues. Last October, he pledged to sign an executive order that would compel the Navy to go back to using steam-powered catapults and hydraulic elevators on new aircraft carriers, which has yet to materialize. Two months later, in announcing plans for the Trump class “battleship,” the President also said that “we have the Ford class. We’re going to be upping that to a different class of aircraft carrier,” but did not elaborate.

Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS)

Watch the Advanced Weapons Elevators on the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford

Phelan’s comments yesterday about the ongoing review were prompted, in part, by a question about whether the Navy has actually been looking at acquiring a new class of aircraft carrier. There is no indication that this is the case currently. The service has explored alternatives to the Ford class, including smaller designs, on several occasions in the past decade or so.

“What I would say on the carriers is, we are looking at [CVN-]82 and [CVN-]83 to review the costs, the designs, the systems, to make sure that they make sense and they have all the systems and requirements that we want going forward,” Phelan explained. “I think it’s a prudent and practical thing for us to do, given the costs of them, as a percentage of the budget, and how we are thinking about the force design and our needs going forward.”

CVN-82 and CVN-83 are the hull numbers assigned to a pair of future Ford class aircraft carriers currently set to be named the USS William J. Clinton and the USS George W. Bush. Construction has not begun on either of those ships, and the Navy has not even awarded contracts yet to order them. The service is asking for advance funds to support the future procurement of CVN-82 in its newly released budget request for the 2027 Fiscal Year. The budget documents also still show plans to seek funding for CVN-83 in the coming years.

The USS Gerald R. Ford is the only member of its class currently in service. It is now in the midst of a marathon deployment that has lasted some 10 months already, the longest for any carrier since the Vietnam War. In its time at sea so far, the ship and its air wing took part in the mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and more recently supported operations against Iran. Ford suffered a fire in March, underscoring concerns about strains on the ship and its crew, as you can read more about here.

There are three more Ford class carriers in various stages of being built. The second ship in the class, the future USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), left port for the first time for initial sea trials in January and is set to be formally delivered to the Navy next year.

John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) Successfully Completes Builder’s Sea Trials

Kennedy and all subsequent ships in the class are already set to have notable differences from Ford, including AN/SPY-6(V)3 radars in place of the design’s original Dual Band Radar (DBR). The immensely troublesome DBR is just one of a laundry list of issues that Ford has had to contend with over the years. The Navy has been trying to leverage lessons learned from those experiences to streamline work going forward.

However, Kennedy, as well as the next two ships in the class after that, the future USS Enterprise (CVN-80) and USS Doris Miller (CVN-81), have all continued to suffer further delays. As of last year, the estimated total procurement costs for Kennedy, Enterprise, and Doris Miller were nearly $13.2 billion, almost $14.25 billion, and just over $15.2 billion, respectively, according to the Congressional Research Service.

This, in turn, has created complications for Navy plans to begin retiring Nimitz class carriers. In May, the service announced it was extending the USS Nimitz‘s service life into 2027, in line with the latest delivery schedule for Kennedy.

“So the President knows we’re reviewing it [the carrier plans], and want [sic] us to put in a review,” Phelan said. “And I think, like any businessman, he’s – okay, make sure you look at all these programs, understand the capabilities and what they’re doing.”

The Secretary of the Navy was asked what metrics the service might be looking at in order to assess the comparative capabilities of the Ford class and the preceding Nimitz class. Phelan was given, as an example, statements the Navy has made in the past about the new EMALS catapults offering improved sortie generation rates and reducing wear and tear on aircraft during launches.

“I think you’ll see the sortie rate come out and it will be eye-watering,” Navy Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds said just yesterday at the Pentagon during the rollout of the service’s proposed budget for the 2027 Fiscal Year, according to USNI News. “The capability is just absolutely incredible.”

Reynolds is currently serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Budget and Director of the Fiscal Management Division within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.

USS Ford Launches, Recovers Fighters With Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS)

“So these are all things you’ve heard. These are all the same things I’ve heard,” Phelan said at the roundtable at Sea Air Space. “I go to the Ronald Reagan School of trust, but verify. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Trust me, we measure and monitor a lot of things in the Navy, including that – the airframes and how that works. So I think it’s a function of just understanding it, for example, is the sortie rate generation that much greater? And then what are the cost implications of this electric catapult, and did it really generate the savings?” Phelan continued. “You know, the Navy would like to say we’ve saved $5 billion in terms of savings in number [sic] of men and maintenance. I just need to check that back up, and that’s what I mean by that.”

“I think, like anything, it’s both understanding the cost-benefit analysis of it, because we really want to make sure we’ve got a good handle on the costs,” the Navy Secretary added. “I think one of the things we have to do a better job of in the Navy is kind of what I call total cost of ownership. So what does it really cost to sustain and maintain these things? I think we do a reasonable job at that, to be honest. But the infrastructure needs on these are also costs you have to understand going in.”

As Phelan noted, the Navy has been conducting reviews of major programs across the service. The Navy Secretary has also shown a willingness to curtail high-profile, but seriously underperforming efforts despite high sunk costs. Last November, the service axed the Constellation class frigate program, long touted as a major priority, but which had become mired in delays and at risk of ballooning costs. Earlier this month, the Navy finally abandoned plans to return the Los Angeles class attack submarine USS Boise to active service, closing out a more than 10-year-long saga that had already cost it $800 million.

Yesterday, Phelan was also asked whether the Ford class could be curtailed as a result of the ongoing review. The possibility of truncating the program has been raised in the past.

“It’s too early to say, but we will have carriers. So, carriers are an important component to [sic] the force, and we will need that,” the Navy Secretary said. “I think it’s more, how do we figure out – like, again, this comes back to every program we’re looking at. What can we do to cut costs? What can we do to make this more efficient? What can we do to make the design more simple [sic]? What are the areas where we think we can save or not save?”

Even just cancelling future orders for Ford class ships would have major downstream impacts, including on the shipbuilding industrial base and its many suppliers. At the same time, the Navy’s shipbuilding priorities also now include the Trump class “battleships,” the first of which may cost $17 billion, according to the latest official estimates. If that price point holds, these large surface combatants will be more expensive than a Ford class aircraft carrier.

“These are very important decisions to be made, and you’re locking into very big contracts and very big platforms that are going to be around for a long time. And so I just think we’re trying to make prudent decisions across everything,” he added. “I think what I found a little bit is, I have a lot of people who know how to do finance. I don’t have a lot of people who necessarily understand finance, understand incentives and deal structures, and that’s something we just need to fix.”

How the Navy’s plans for the Ford class, and aircraft carriers in general, may evolve going forward will likely become clearer after the current review is completed.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com